To The Victorious

Consider Revelation 21:5-7.

 

What does it mean, the victorious will inherit the blessings? My dictionary defines victorious only as an adjective. Of course I know it's used as a noun, not just here, but other places, though it's perhaps somewhat dated. Interesting. That's two dictionaries now. Just a minute, I'll be right back.

 

Okay, having found dictionaries generally agree as to the adjective status, that leaves us with an implied noun modified. We could get creative, but "person" will do. Or simply "victor" rather than "victorious person."

 

So, the victor inherits blessings. Look at the verb! Inherit. Pass by intestacy, pass without a will. (If there's a will, property passes by bequest, it's not inherited.) And who gets the property that passes by intestacy? Family. Spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, siblings--it depends on the particular situation and the operative law. Those are the rules. But what's going on in this passage? God's saying all things are new. Who's the new family? It probably still includes the old family, but add in your OA family and, well, all God's kids.

 

So, the victorious inherit blessings. We talked about the part of speech but didn't really consider the meaning of this victorious victor. Winner. Is that like those phone calls that say I've won something, the ones I cut off because of anticipated strings? God, I hope not!

 

Winning, victory, takes something on my part fist -- entering a contest, running a race, producing a product -- action, commitment, participation. God could certainly make us all winners free-gratis, without the attached strings. But he doesn't because he's not a puppeteer, not a manipulator. He doesn't give us strings OR pull our strings.

 

Actually, victor comes closer to conqueror rather than winner when we look at the history of the word. Certainly winners have conquered -- the other racers, contestants, or competitors. Conquerors, though, need not have a human competitor. We think of conquest over Mt. Everest, or a personal goal or of an addiction. Conquerors may best fears, disease, or a tough music score.

 

So. To inherit from God the father, or from the children of God, we need to be victorious. Alas. We're powerless over food, our lives have become unmanageable. But it's okay. We've got an ace up our sleeve. Back about the time John was transcribing the Revelation, Epictetus over in Greece talked like we used to talk. He said, "You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself." But he was wrong. We can depend on a higher power!

 

So it's okay. We're already victorious. Paul said it in Romans 8:37:  In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us!  

 

 

 

The King's Peace

In the United States when an indictment or information (the charging instrument for a misdemeanor) is issued, almost invariably it will say, "against the peace and dignity of the state." That's a holdover from the concept of The King's Peace (or actually at this point in England it's called The Queen's Peace.) It comes from the concept we innately recognize that each of us has a personal space, and if somebody gets too close and they're not special persons who can be in that personal space, we feel violated. 

Well, each feudal lord had that kind of space, called his "peace." And he controlled what happened within that space, could make rules that made him comfortable. And of course it goes without saying that the more powerful the person, the larger the personal space that person can claim. So the king's started out pretty big and kings amassed more and more area, taking away from the feudal lords. Then came the concept of "legal fiction" which means legal lie. One legal lie I've always found interesting was the source of the word "felony" but that's another (long) story. The legal fiction I set out to explain is the king's peace. His big space expanded because the king built highways, so his peace went with the Interstate Highway system (or the medieval equivalent thereof, the royal roads.) After that, it didn't take a lot more fiction to just fill all the nation with the King's Peace.

I got to thinking about the concept of the King's Peace as it might refer to the King of Kings. For God, it's not a fiction. His presence fills the world, the universe, and beyond. My concept is that God's not in the universe, the universe is in God. So the King's Peace is everywhere. God's peace is everywhere. Wherever you are, God is there and Peace is there. You just have to breathe deep, look for the peace, and, voila! it's in you!

About that Yoke

Consider Matthew 11:28-30.

I woke this morning to a recovery speaker saying he'd memorized the Third Step prayer wrong, that he was using "Thy love, Thy power, and Thy way of life." When "corrected" as the rest of the group said the prayer, he realized his need to put the love first, for the assurance inherent in the love.

Before getting out of bed I prayed the Third Step, Fourth Step ("we ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be"), Seventh Step, and Eleventh Step ("praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.") I knew then I needed to meditate, and I scanned my brain for a verse to meditate on, and the answer was immediate. "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." I realized the yoke's easy, but it is a yoke. It's a frame designed to be carried across a person's shoulders with equal loads suspended from each end. We don't see yokes around here, but I certainly have seen them traveling. In Nicaragua I took a picture not of a yoke, but of a man-powered transport. A yoke is a yoke. It's an impediment. It's a burden. Abstinence, abstaining from other obsessions, doing the next right thing -- is a burden. Yes, it's an easy burden. Yes, it's light. It's even joyful and freeing, but it's a burden, and when my rebellious self insists "This program's supposed to be easy. I don't have to work at it," I know that's hogwash. I have to surrender to God's will, let him direct me, and to enjoy the company as I bear the burden. And thrill in the destination.

Day two, no games, eating on the food plan only. It's a yoke and a burden, but lighter than it was yesterday, heavier than it will be tomorrow. I'm assured of the love as well as the power and the ability for God to direct me to live life his way!

Greetings!

Yes, it's been too long. My sponsor nudged me toward that realization, but I already knew it. I sit here today after a productive, abstinent day. I can't say that about yesterday or many of the days in the weeks just past, but today it's absolutely true. I will sit here at this desk another 20 minutes before going a couple of blocks to a meeting. My strong urge was to open that old nemesis, a computer game. I had deleted Spider Sol from this brand new computer I got in January. Unfortunately, I searched for it and found an acceptable version online. And not blocked by the filter on this system. Therefore, it's up to me to block it, just like I've blocked the cherry coffeecake in the outer office all day. I actually don't know if it's still there, and I don't know what it tasted like. And won't.

 

Today I've been busy. I read three devotional books and the Big Book after getting up and while getting the household ready to go with a husband somewhat under the weather. I got to work and spent the morning busy at work-related projects and looking at emails, etc., between obligations. I took part in two interviews for a job and got back to the computer with my immediate obligations met, ripe for opening a computer game. But instead I started working on a project I need to do to meet a requirement on my amends list I composed yesterday. I didn't get much done, can't figure out an excel question, but I did move the right direction. I spent the noon hour with my counselor and ran an errand for an organization, then went to my other office where I ended up talking to the manager of that site then working on a website I should have updated a couple of weeks ago. I went home to check on hubby and get his medicine from the pharmacy, feed him, and see to issues there, and I'm back at my main office. So, it's been a busy and productive day. One thing I did for my recovery, though, this morning was in response to an email poetry prompt, but it describes my intentions in working my program today and for days to come, with God's help.

 

Beaten Path

Some paths hold your feet,

move them along on earth

worn smooth, comfortable,

familiar your first visit.

The path of least resistance,

straying takes effort.

  

Some trails hint the path,

hard to detect, difficult to track,

though heart-felt right,

chosen carefully. Staying

takes effort, but once done

for long enough may yield

the right, well-beaten, path.

May your day be blessed. Thanks for blessing mine by being there to support me. 

Rigorous Honesty

The February 15th selection from For Today is awesome, talking about the various kinds of honesty, with truth as an eternal unchangeable. I have had enough of cash-register honesty, tell-you-for-your-own-good honesty, and one-sided honesty. I want the self-honesty. And I know I can only reach that by working this program.

I meant to put one of my poems here yesterday, but I didn't. I'll share it now:

Incredulous Love

 

I love you.
You know I didn't always – 
hated, loathed, despised – 
never ever expected love
to enter in.
I can't dispute
you deserve the wrath.
I let you sabotage my life 
to shambles yet clung
to you as my only hope –
such a dope I was – and you.
Your ugly face remains the same
but changed expansively
to something fair,
near radiant at times.
We've blossomed, you and I,
my mirror image.
I stand before you, humble,
calm, amazed to love you.

Comfort Behavior

Something struck me yesterday, and it seems appropriate to talk about it here. My comfort behavior in the car for many years was to stop and get something sweet when I was traumatized, frightened, angry, anxious, sad, bored...you get the picture. Every trip almost, however short the journey, at least once. Yesterday I left a tense situation at work to hurry to a meeting where I had a role and hurried to get back to more of the tense situation. I didn't stop anywhere, didn't eat the pile of candy sitting before me when I sat down at the meeting, shoved it in front of somebody else instead. I did engage in comfort behavior, but it was healthy behavior. And probably weird, but it was what I needed, and good for me. 

 

When my dad died on Christmas Eve, we played unusual music at the funeral with the efforts of my older son to make it happen. It was music very closely tied to both of them. After the funeral, son asked who to give the disk to, and I took it, put it in my purse, and when I got to the car, in the CD player. It's one instrumental piece, and it's less than three minutes long. It's still in the CD player in the car, and when I am fed up with the world, I push the CD button to play it, and turn up the volume to what we played at the funeral, "Loud enough!" And it comforts WAY more than an apple fritter would. I think I'll start being aware of the comfortable things in my life and keeping them in mind when I need the warm cuddlies.

Long time absent....

I had no idea exactly how long until I looked at the last post. But I'm here, still loving what's going on with life, still working program, and still struggling against it. I've had squeaky-clean abstinence since last Monday when I learned the last door has opened for the publication of the book of meditations I started drafting here on this blog. I expect it will be out within the next couple of months, and that's exciting. And scary. But this never has been my book. It started as meditations written so my mind would calm down enough to focus, and the progress of the book from here. In that post I said, "I can do this. I will do this. No, I won't. I will stand aside and let God do it through me." And that's certainly how it's happened. The book will be called Slender Steps to Sanity: Biblical Notes of Hope by a Compulsive Overeater by OAStepper, published by Eagle Wings Press . 

It's been almost a year since I finished the book, and I was eager then to get it out before the public. That didn't happen, and I see now that it's coming out on God's timetable, not mine. In the meantime, I've met some delightful people who have read the book and made decisions about it. Even more than that, I've grown a year in OA, and two years in OA may still be an infant, but I'm far beyond the point in recovery I was last March. 

How do I describe the difference? Tough question. 

• I've struggled with food, having reached the lowest weight in the last thirty years and becoming complacent with that. Recently, though, what appeared thin to me I see with new eyes, eyes that see the 190 I weigh right now as fat. Not nearly like 300, but way too much for complacency. And I'd already awakened to that fact before getting the final approval, but this seals the deal and my abstinence has been more squeaky clean than my stated food plan even since then.
• Humility. I feel a lot like the Lancelot character in the movie Camelot. After describing an impossibly high standard for a knight of the round table, he answers his own question, "Where is somebody so great?" with "It's ME!" (Yes. I know the lyrics. I'm avoiding copyright implications. Here's the words.) Guinevere asks what he knows of humility. At the end of the movie, they've both learned the meaning of the word without question, and they live it. Maybe I've not grasped it that thoroughly, but I'm miles further down the road than when I wanted "my" book to come out. Now I'm ready to be the tool however God needs to use me.
• I've done a lot more writing, primarily poetry, that enhances the manuscript now. Okay, that's not a difference in me.
• I've a better idea how hands-off I need to be on marketing. I respect and understand better the traditions of OA.

Anyway, I'm here, I'm back, and I'll post to this blog more often. Thanks for being there.